Thomas B Collins vs The Bear
by volitaire
Summary: Mark learns never to leave Collins alone with the booze... especially without locking his bedroom door...


_**Author's Note**: I wrote this story as a break from depressing Prozac Mark. It's also dedicated to freedomfighter82, who I promised I'd write a Collins story for, but I haven't written him into F.H. yet. So yay happiness._

_P.S. It's pre-Rent, if you couldn't figure that out._

_-------------------------------------------_

"Roger… _what_ is _this_?"

"Uhhh… It looks like your shirt."

"No shit. What is it doing out _here_?"

"Drying."

"No… it was drying _upstairs_. From the _fire escape_. With _clothespins_."

"Well it's not going to dry laying in the snow."

"Roger! Are you incompetent or something? _Why_ do you think I'm asking why it's on the _ground_?"

"I thought that was rhetorical."

"You're a dumbass. Did you throw this out here?"

"No!"

"Are you sure?"

"Yes I'm _sure_. Why would I go out on the fire escape in the dead of winter?"

"To hang your _laundry_."

"Mark, you hang the laundry. Except…not your own, obviously."

"Oh my God. You are so thick sometimes."

I pull my shirt-, which a few hours ago was dripping wet, but is now stiff as a board and forming icicles- out of the slushy puddle I found it in. Disgusted, I hold it by two fingers at arms length and usher it into the apartment. Seconds after we step inside the lack of winter air sends a furious series of drips catapulting off the cashmere.

"Mark, you are dripping on the carpet."

"Roger! Will you _shut up_? Maybe if you wouldn't have thrown my shirt off the balcony I wouldn't be _dripping_!"

"I already _told_ you I wasn't _on_-"

"Oh shut up- you know as _well_ as I do this isn't the first time you've thrown something of mine off the roof."

"Well then maybe you shouldn't have put your _ass_ on my guitar and-"

"If you leave your shit on the chair in my room, then what do you _expect_- wait a minute. No, I've got a better one! If you wouldn't have _busted the dryer_ than maybe I could have a place to put this…this 'fabric waterfall', other than in puddle form on the staircase!"

"I apologized for the dryer okay?"

"Well 'I'm sorry isn't going to get it fixed! Do you know how pissed Benny is? He's making _me_ pay for it Roger. But you know what? I'm not going to. You can, seeing as you broke it! You can't put metal hangers in a dryer _Roger_."

"I was drunk… _whoops_…"

"That's no excuse! I'm serious. You can pay for it. I'm going to string a fucking clothesline through your bedroom- where it's nice and safe and dry, and I'll hang all my sopping wet clothes on it. I'll hang 'em right over your bed so they drip on your mattress. And then it'll get all moldy and you'll catch Gangrene and you can learn a serious lesson when you're in the hospital and they're scraping _mold spores_ off your face."

"If you do that then I'll have a _reason_ to throw your shit off the balcony! It's reverse psychology Mark."

"No it's just common _sense_. If it's not your shit, _don't_ touch it! That was only clean shirt for the next few days."

"So you can wear one of mine!"

"Nah- I'll pass. All your clothes already have Gangrene."

"Nice. Real nice Mark, you little snot. Thanks."

While he's turned away, I toss the shirt at Roger's head and it lands with a soggy 'plop' smack dab over his eyes.

"Awwww… shit. Argh! C'mere. _Come here_. I'm gonna fucking _kill you_."

I bolt up the stairs.

Roger heaves the shirt at my escaping frame and it spins vertically, sending pinwheels of water droplets all over the hallway. I laugh menacingly and dodge the sweater, and it lands, by the collar, on the railing's endpost.

Roger shakes his hair, adding more water to the already dripping walls and nearly stumbles running up after me.

"Ewww!" I squeal. "Roger smells like _wet dog_!"

Roger barks furiously and clamors up on all fours, baring his teeth and growling.

I reach the apartment door, panting, and fumble to get my key in the lock. Before I can turn the key, the door is thrown open and Collins, dressed in nothing but his undershirt and boxers and… a coonskin cap, wielding a half-empty bottle of Schnapps, leaps onto the landing and commands, "Down boy!" in a booming, drunken slur.

Roger stops and stands up quietly, brushing off his knees and maintaining his composure only long enough to catch his breath, and then bursts out laughing.

"Collins, what the fuck?"

"I'm camping!" He replies. "Care to join me?"

"Um…no?"

"What?" I ask. "_Camping_?"

"Ssh…" Collins hisses. "The bears will hear you." He giggles and plunks his hat, tail in my face, on my head.

I whip it back at him and ask again, but quieter. "No really. Camping?"

"Hell yeah! I'm sick of this city. It's too…stuffy. I need… the _open air_! The trees! The wilderness! The wildlife! The… breeze!" He tugs off his undershirt and throws it over the balcony. It floats gently to the doormat and instantly absorbs the mashed-in snow.

He prances joyfully back inside and I look at Roger with an eyebrow raised.

"Camping?" Roger mouths.

I shrug and we follow him in.

"Holy shit was there a tornado in here?" I cry, scrambling to salvage pages of several of my screenplays that have blown- or have been thrown- all over the floor.

"It's the mountain air Mark!" Collins yells from somewhere in the house. "Breathe it in! Isn't it…fresh?"

"It smells like exhaust from 14th Street. And fuck it's cold in here. Collins! Why are the windows open?"

"Aw, suck it up you pussy. Can't take a little wind? At this altitude we're lucky it's not below zero!"

"Coll- it's like three _below_ outside. And yeah- it's _windy_! Close the windows, for Pete's sake! Are you insane? I don't care if we're on Everest! You let all the heat out!"

"Yeah man…" Roger mutters from behind me. "You're gonna get a cold or something…" He's trying _so_ hard not to burst into laughter. He serious face waivers and he has to step into the hallway to catch himself.

"Roger don't encourage him. Help me close the windows." I can't help it. I crack a smile and then chuckle all the way to my room.

"Shit!" I get to the doorway and scream. Roger's hilarity cuts short but Collins continues singing and banging around somewhere in the kitchen.

"What?"

"Okay Roger. I believe you now."

Roger slinks up behind me and gasps. But then he's beleaguered with laughter again and he calls, "Ooohh…Collins, Mark's gonna _kill_ yooou…"

My room is in worse shape than the entire apartment's destruction combined.

My dresser drawers are all pulled open and every article of clothing I own hangs in some eccentric position from the light fixture. The bottom drawer however, is propped up by a stick, and a withered carrot on a string dangles from the knob. A fucking rabbit trap.

All the books from the bookcase are either strewn on the floor, or made into a succession of stepping stones throughout the room. My bed is overturned and shoved up against the vacant bookcase, bent at the middle, forming a lopsided, upside down 'V'. My covers line the inside and my sheet is thrown messily over the opening. A tent. A sausage skewered on the fireplace tongs lays bitten and cold on the radiator. And there's a can of pork and beans wedged in the window sill.

Outside the clothesline is snapped and flaps wildly in the breeze. Two pairs of my pants lay crumpled on the rungs of the fire escape, and a blazer of Rogers is wound around the flagpole.

I stare with my mouth open in disbelief.

"Collins- Collins what the hell! Ah! Can't you camp in your _own_ room?"

"Yeah, but yours is all dark and depressing. Like a cave." Collins wanders up behind us, grinning. He pulls me back from the doorway. I yank his hand off and scowl.

"You better fucking pick all that up!"

"No man! I can't go back in there. That's the _cave_. The _bear's_ in there."

"Collins, you're an asshole. Oh my God! You're lucky I didn't leave my camera in there. Would you have thrown that out the window too?"

"I have no use for technology when I'm roughing it…" He scoffs.

"Argh!" I push him inside. "Go clean it up! Now!"

"No!" He squeals, almost frightened. "The _bear_…He'll bite me!"

"There is no fucking bear…" I snarl.

"Yes there is Mark. He moves real fast. He's real vicious. He's hiding under your blanket. _Sshh_…"

"There's no bear!" I yelp, frustrated. Roger shakes his head. He's still cracking up. "Here Collins. I'll _prove_ it to you. Come on."

"I'm not kidding man." Urges Collins, trying to keep a serious face. "There really, really is…"

I sigh through my nose, handing Roger my camera bag and hastily rolling up my sleeves. "There are no bears within like, FIVE HUNDRED MILES of the city. Let alone in my _room_."

"Nononono Mark don't do it!" Squeaks Collins desperately.

I wave him away and step carefully over my ruined books. I nearly trip on half the severed clothesline and drop to my knees in front of the makeshift tent.

"Ah!" Collins grabs Roger's arm and ducks behind him. Roger looks at him suspiciously but then peers cautiously around the doorframe, squinting.

I wave him hands frantically into the darkness behind the mattress and yell, "Here bear bear bear!" I feel stupid.

"See? No bear!"

"No! Ah Mark there _is_ a bear!"

I yank the sheet from the opening, nearly knocking the mattress on top of me and shake it madly at the tent.

Collins flinches.

I sigh and duck my head, crawling deeper between the bookcase and the mattress. I ruffle my quilt that is lining the floor and stomp my toes on the hardwood. "See? No. Bear."

Suddenly, something in front of me moves.

"What the fuck?" I gasp, almost knocking the mattress down again and scooting backwards. I push my glasses up my nose and strain to see into the darkness.

"What?" Roger calls eagerly from the doorway.

"There's- I think there _is_ something in here…"

"I'm telling you, it's the bear…"

My heart beats a little faster but I'm too curious (and pissed) to crawl out. I punch at the folds in the blankets. From my right, something squeaks.

"Whoa!" I jerk into a kneeling position and hold my breath.

"What, what?" Wails Roger.

I try slithering backwards but I'm trying to keep my eyes on whatever's in here with me. My heel bumps the baseboard and I flinch, thinking it's some other creature. My head bounces off the mattress' underside, and that's the final push the thing needs to slide over the empty shelves and crash nosily into my bed. The falling mattress doesn't harm me, but it knocks my glasses off, and I'm left blind and kneeling in a pile of blankets.

Roger laughs even harder, if that's possible, but Collins looks proud.

"Yeah Mark! You squished the bear!"

"I squished something…" I muse, fumbling for my glasses.

Suddenly Roger lets out a fretful man-scream and his outline vanishes from the doorway.

"Yah! Mark! The bear! The bear! Run!" Collins cries and takes off after Roger.

The bear? What? Oh fuck. I can't even see. Where are my glasses, where are my glasses? I plow my hand around in the blankets, running my palm along the outline of the fallen mattress until it makes contact… with something…. small… and warm… and furry.

I don't need my glasses to see that I'm practically petting a squirrel.

The thing quivers under my hand, tail twitching with utter, instinctual fear. My heart does the same.

I'm not afraid of squirrels.

Just _rabies_.

I pull my hand back. The squirrel stares me down for three more _looong_ seconds. Then it does a two-foot back flip, chest heaving, and bolts at grueling diminutive rodent speeds out into the loft.

Collins yells, "Ah! It's back! It's after me, fuckin' bear!" and pounds to the door, throwing it open and running into the hallway.

"It's out it's out it's out!" Roger yells triumphantly, following suit.

I pull myself from the wreckage, glasses abandoned, and race as fast as I'm visually able into the hall.

Collins stumbles and hollers all the way down the stairs to the exit, shaking the entire hall with his frightened footsteps, squirrel squeaking and spazzing at his heels.

Shirtless and pantless Collins bursts out of the apartment, onto Avenue B, and smack into Benny, who barely has enough time to raise an eyebrow at the anarchist before stepping over the oncoming vermin and tripping into the hallway to scream up the stairs, "What THE _FUCK_ is going on here! I'm getting endless complaints from your neighbor's saying that you're-"

'_Plop'_

Benny is cut short as my still-soaking sweater falls from its place on the railing to lands exactly on Benny's bald cranium.

"Oops." Roger sneers, putting up his hands innocently.

"Bet you're glad I broke the dryer now Mark.


End file.
